Brandon Anderson

Most everyone now is aware that malware, viruses and spyware are a problem. Some of us know that these viruses and spyware can take control of our computers, phones, and electronic devices, if the hacker so wishes to. Viruses and spyware are programs, just as if you installed a program off the internet or a CD. Have you every thought of that little webcam sitting on top of your computer or on your laptop? That’s right. It can also be controlled by whoever so chooses, should they have the knowledge and need to do to.

There are various ways to protect yourself from this, first is by using software. Like anti-spyware, anti-malware, and anti-virus, but those are not definitive protection against hackers using your webcam for their own perverted web games. No.

When it comes to immediate privacy concerns such as unauthorized uses of a webcam. You only have two options really. Unplug it, pry it off your laptop or monitor, or the more practical way: cover it up! You can use whatever you got, tape, a band aid (a bit tacky though), a piece of cardboard, or even a CCIPO business card! (as seen below) Whenever it comes to personal online security DEFINATE and HARDWARE solutions such as this are the only options. Programs and software alone WILL NOT protect you.

Some people may think. Well that’s only if I got something to hide, right? No way. It’s been known to be done by online sexual predators, people attempting to frame / blackmail you, such as taking secret photos in bedrooms and sending them to your friends or posting them online, etc.

^ CCIPO Business Card covering Macbook webcam.

I admit it. I am a horrible blogger. I tend to leave my blog un-updated for weeks and months at a time. I HOPE to change this soon. Stay with me, I’m just a bad blogger. Forgive me.

- Brandon

For a long time I chose not to use Flickr, for various reasons. One of them including that I never had a Yahoo account, that wasn’t one of the ones I used for a little while forgot about and never used again. I’ve always been a Gmail user, and Google user and didn’t use Yahoo all that often. I sometimes would use Picasa from Google for the odd photo or two – mainly because it was convenient for me to use my Google account to login to Picasa. But I was viewing a few photo’s in Flickr a while back, and finally decided to try it out (I had before, but not extensively – and not consistently) and see what all the fuss was about. I had always thought of Flickr as a very 1 way – dull place where you upload your photos (or videos) and never touch them again. I was wrong, so very wrong. I’ve been using Flicker for little over a month now, consistently. I’ve become addicted to the social aspect of Flickr, it’s fun to be able to discuss photos, graphics and the odd video or two with people whom I’ve never met, or have met. I’ve spent hours just commenting and favoriting photos on Flickr.

More importantly it’s given the photos on my computer, sitting there going stale, only viewed a few times by family or friends, a new home. Which I am very happy for. Am I a late bloomer to flock to Flickr? Definitely. And is any of the information here going to be useful to anyone? Probably not, but I hope it will give a few people with the same outlook as I had on Flickr a new one. And revitalize their spirit of using Flickr for not only photo or video sharing, but as a social experience as well!

If you would like to take a look at some of my pictures on Flickr, you can go HERE or view some of the most recent uploads on the right side of the blog. :)

- Brandon Anderson

Twitter was the target of a DNS exploit and defaced with the below image at around 10:o0 pm today, and is now currently offline. Below is an image of the twitter.com website hacked supposedly by the “Iranian Cyber Army.”

[UPDATE]: Twitter.com was down for a period of time and is now back up. It is suggested if use the same passwords on other websites you should change them now. It has also been found that it was a DNS exploit compromise.

- Brandon Anderson

As many have seen version 1 of the Brandon Anderson logo had a brown background and blue text. It was initially made as a spin-off of the default twitter.com user logo. It was my own rendition of their popular default user logo. I have since then updated it, with a pink background and green text. The design is the same just a new color scheme!  Though I am still and will probably always be a bit impartial to the original one. But I couldn’t help adding my favorite colors to it.

Version 1:

Version 2:

And yes, both logo`s are creative commons – Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada Licence.

Brandon Anderson

I find it an annoying task, and maybe I’m just lazy. But moving or copying a files to a Macs shared folder get tedious. I use the shared folder on a daily basis and all day. I use numerous separate accounts (to keep things organized) and a lot of the time I need to send them over to the other account to use for whatever reason. (and yes, before you ask – I have a “Personal,” “Business,” and “Other” account on my one Mac – I likes da’ productivity!).

So I was sitting there the other day, thinking of how I could automate such as task and I yelled “OMG I will use Automator!” (it’s a nerd thing, the phrase I yelled when I thought of how to do it, I mean.) Automator is a standard application on the Mac comes on every Mac.

So at 3am I decided to quickly make something up to copy and move Automator plugin for the Finder. I finished ‘em up in a few minutes later. But I thought I’d give it away to the people who don’t want to learn about Automator or Applescript (you should though!)

Download the below .zip archive, unzip it, and put both the “move to shared” and “copy to shared” Finder plugin files and move them to Library > Workflows > Applications > Finder.. and you’ll be good to go! It will now show up whenever you right click any file select “More” and then select “Automator” they will show up there, just click an option for example “Move to Shared” or “Copy to Shared.”

DOWNLOAD PLUGINS

I hope this helps increase your productivity just a bit!

Brandon.

You may be asking yourself, “am I a nerd?”. Here’s a good indication if you are.

1. If you know the origins of the word “Nerd”, i.e., Dr. Seuss’s book “If I Ran the Zoo” where the narrator Gerald McGrew claims that he would collect “a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too” for his imaginary zoo.

2. If you don’t attend mindless social rituals or mindless social gatherings, i.e., “parties,”

3. Especially if you refer to “parties” as “mindless social rituals” or “mindless social gatherings”.

4. If you’re reading this blog.

There you have it, 4 sure fire ways of determining your social status. To clarify, I am not expressing anything bad about nerds. I am one myself.

- Brandon Anderson

scrubil⋅icous

[scrubil-icous]

–adjective
1.
a friendly greeting
2.
displaying joy
3.
favorably disposed; inclined to approve
4.
not hostile or at variance
–adverb
6.
Also, scrubil⋅icous⋅ily. in a scrubilicousily manner
–noun
7.
a person who is in sympathetic relationship to oneself or one’s side; one who shows no hostility.

Origin:
10:39 PM Jul 18th from web, Brandon Anderson (@BrandonA & @Scrubilicous).

It’s appalling how many computer users and consumers are unaware of the laws and regulations against the use of peer to peer file sharing software to download copyrighted or pirated work. Out of at least half of the computer users and consumers that have (or haven’t) used peer to peer file sharing (torrents, file sharing etc) are completely oblivious to any laws or regulations that disallow the use of them to download music, videos, or software.

While software developers, producers and artists go through great lengths to inform users that it is a crime, and is no different then going into a music or movie store and stealing a CD or DVD off the rack. The people who do understand the laws prohibiting these activities are simply on the premise that they will never be caught. While the RIAA (Recording Industry of America) has put out various reports, citing the users that have been caught charged, and sued for the illegal use of peer to peer file sharing. Many of these cases have involved people being charged, that do not even own a computer (or electronic device in which illegal downloads can be done) or parents where their children (under the age of majority, or legal age in that particular jurisdiction) have been charged for their illegal downloads. While this may seem ridiculous it does outline the facts that, people do get charged for these crimes.

It’s even presented that some people understand downloading content from sources such as “Limewire” are illegal, however are mislead to believe that paying for their Pro version of the software (which contains faster download speeds, and more features) is being sent to the content creators. Many people have brought the point up that, “where else can you legally download music, movies etc. If all of these sources are illegal?”. You can download songs, movies etc from the Internet if they come from the correct (legal) sources, such as iTunes from Apple Inc. They offer completely legal downloads of content (at a cost, as with all legal sources).

One would also argue that the laws in Canada and US (including many other countries) are lax, when it comes to downloading illegal content/pirated content. While it may be true that many of the charges against users haven’t been the full punishment applicable by the law. There are still many cases where users have been charged under the Copyright Act. The maximum penalties for unauthorized manufacturing, importation or distribution of copyrighted products, is up to a $1 million dollar fine and five years in prison in Canada, US laws remain similar.

By Brandon Anderson

Is there anything Sean can’t do, and Andy break? (except Windows, it comes broken right out of the box!)

Lab Rats, remains one of my favorite podcasts. In the above episode Sean and Andy discuss True Crypt a program for Mac, Linux and that other thing we call Windows used for encrypting data on your hard drive.